Good article BN. Pericles is right in so far as I mainly use academic settings as that's where I worked for 10 years, although I have worked for political parties and in advertising. I should spread my examples around a bit more.

I don't believe people enter a career in HR to be pawns of management making riduculous policies, which in many cases, common sense dictates that they be ignored. So what happened between the HR degree and the practice?

I'm not having a shot at Work Choice (are we still aloud to use that word?) but I do have major problems with the stifling HR bureaucracy that has infected both the public and private sectors. I'm all for flexibility and the ability for businesses to act quickly when they see an opportunity.

HR tends to defend itself by saying that they're there to ensure quality. I suggest they're there to try justify their jobs - and they're failing to do that.

I purposely left out the name(s) of the on-line recruitment agencies but I hope people can read between the lines and seek out the truth for themselves.

Malcolm King aka Cheryl

HR _should_ be a value add function, and correctly implemented policies and procedures should have a positive impact on the business, although I grant you that there is often an additional layer of bureaucracy that is generated as a result. Thankfully, modern human resources technology (the field that I work in) can relieve _some_ of the impact of this.

The value provided by HR should be self evident - if the staff are:
* remunerated (reasonably) well
* are rewarded for performance
* training is available, timely, well directed and valuable
* recruitment can be undertaken in a reasonable way
* grievances are handled in an appropriate way

then it should be obvious that HR is performing well and adding value.

But all of that hinges on my previous comment - management buy-in. If that doesn't occur, then all the HR training, policies and procedures and efforts will come to naught. And of course, it requires good policies to be put forward by HR, and let's be honest, humans being humans means that policies won't always be 5 star rated.

The other thing to keep in mind is some of the legislation that companies have to work under. Work Cover, COMCARE and other "safety" organisations, for instance, place enormous administration requirements on businesses, which ultimately then reside within the personnel area. It's a function that most HR practitioners would rather do without. The point being that HR doesn't necessarily create all the administration - some times it's forced upon us...

The NSW told its workforce *you know your job better than we ever will*
True but a monkey would have.
Yes minister is a true story based on government HR.
Failure to do your job gets you a higher position in such as the RTA.

Good article, Malcolm – the HR industry, like a lot of consultants, is like a fungus growing on a damp log. Why do they grow? Because they can. Do they value-add anything? No. Are they there for the development of staff? No. Are they there to act as a buffer between management and staff. Most definitely.

Where I work, HR has been used by management as a buffer between themselves and staff making reasonable and intelligent complaints. Of course, all you get from HR is obfuscation when it comes to addressing the real problem. In fact, management are just as guilty. Come to think of it, so are many unions.

Why has it taken so long for people to wake up to HR? I think its high time for a culture change in Australian workplaces. Come on you Gen-Ys!

There is one underlying cause of all these problems of too much bureaucracy,rules and regulation and that is our legal disease that has us all comatose with fear of litigation.It has now got so bad that it is destroying our productivity and quality of life.

We just tie ourselves in knots with meaningless word games.Decades ago we built the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy scheme with far less money and technology than now.Just look at the coal ships lined up in both NSW and Qld;because of Govt incompetence we cannot forfill out contracts because the infrastructure is not there.Now these losses are in the $ billions.

For all our wealth/technology we cannot achieve what past generations did under real poverty.

G'day all,

Admiral Grace Hopper, the lady who took the US navy into the computer age (and who created the term "a bug in my computer" when an errant moth flew into the computer room) once said:-

"you don't manage people. You manage things. You lead people"

Therein lies my opposition to the term "Human Resources" for all too often I have seen HR people treating staff as "things" and not as people and in fact, it comprises a large part of one of my addresses at Conferencves and seminars.